


don't cut off your long hair, do as you're told.

by lonelyheartsclub_com



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: trans!Alfred Cheng
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28823262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyheartsclub_com/pseuds/lonelyheartsclub_com
Summary: alfred cheng never felt like a girl.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	don't cut off your long hair, do as you're told.

**Author's Note:**

> tw //deadnaming

Alfred was a confused 14 year old, one lost in the space and time of being a teenager. He didn't know what the world was really like, didn't know what actual pain was, and didn't even know himself until that one night. It was a casual gathering, and he ran out when they started talking about him getting married and having kids. Alfred never wanted kids, and he sure as hell didn't want to conform to his mother and father's ideals for him. 

He did not want the trophy wife life, and so there he was, sat in that field, in a light blue _cheongsam_ , horridly insecure and confused.

Why had he never felt like a girl?

It was confusing to him, but he'd often dream about being a boy, and he'd wake up and he'd do whatever he wanted, because his parents would do anything for him, and they'd do anything to protect his image from the press. He'd kiss all the boys and the girls he wanted to, and he wouldn't be under fire for it, because the press didn't care about whatever men did wrong. They cared abut girls, though. Whatever they wore, how long their hair was, how many kids they had, how well they married.

Being a girl never spoke to Alfred. 

What spoke to Alfred was the freedom of being a boy. He felt as if...there was some sort of mistake. Like he was a boy born in a girl's body. He had a girl's body, but a boy's thoughts. He had never wanted to be Frances Cheng, and he flinched whenever someone called him that, because Frances felt like some sort of a name he wanted to bury, as if it were...a dead name. A name he wouldn't answer to. 

He ran back into the gathering, to see his parents' disapproving glare, and he took the scissors and ran. He shut the door and he ran and he ran, as far as he could get, before cutting his hair. _Snip, snip, snip_. It all fell in straight, black clods, and there stood his mother, who looked utterly horrified. 

"Frances, what are you doing?"

"I don't want this silly long hair! It makes me feel a girl, and I hate that!" he shouted, snipping at it more, until it was short as short could be. He did not want to associate long hair with being a girl, but that was what society had done to him. 

"Frances-"

"Don't call me that!" he protested.

His mother rolled her eyes. "Come inside, darling. We don't have to talk about you having kids, if that's what this is about."

So Alfred put the scissors down and took his mother's hand.

Society came in shockwaves after that. They whispered about, _"the mentally unwell Frances Cheng!" who had cut at all her pretty long hair._

Alfred wanted to laugh in their faces and tell them to go fuck themselves, but that was something he'd be struck for, called unladylike, be ridiculed.

Because a woman could not do anything without being ridiculed.

That was not why Alfred thought himself a boy, though. It was the fact that he had always gravitated to things that spoke to him, and those things were considered masculine. It was the fact that he'd sneak into his father's closet and wear his father's button up suits, and he'd put on a deep voice and pretend to flirt with girls.

It was because Alfred knew he was a boy inside, and nothing would ever take that away from him. 

So, he stopped wearing _cheongsams_ and those horrid frilly dresses, and he started wearing suits. He spent times in the medical part of the library, trying to figure out what it was that was wrong with him.

_"Transgender - where you feel like you were born in the wrong body. Where you are mentally a boy, you're physically a girl."_

That was it. That was what Alfred was, he was transgender.

He called his uncle Thomas, who lived all the way in the Shandong Province up north. He asked him what to do, and his uncle simply told him to tell his parents, and they'd do what they could to help him become a boy. 

It was a hard decision to make, really, coming out. But it was one Alfred did not regret - for he would not be the person he was nowadays if he did not blurt it out to his mother whilst she was sipping wine. 

He donned his finest suit, and he snipped at his hair, like he had all those months ago, cutting it to a fashionable length that looked like his uncle's. Alfred looked at himself in the mirror.

He was Alfred Cheng, not Frances Cheng.

And fuck anybody that tried to take that away from him. 


End file.
